Samuel Beckett

Echo's Bones

The Vulture
dragging his hinger through the sky of my skull shell of sky and earth strooping to the prone who must soon take up their life and walk mocked by a tissue that may not serve till hunger earth and sky be offal

Enueg I
Exeo in a spasm tired of my darling's red sputum from the Portobello Private Nursing Home it secret things and toil to the crest of the surge of the steep perilous bridge and lapse down blankly under the scream of the hoarding round the bright stiff banner of the hoarding into a black west throttled with clouds. Above the mansions the algum-trees the mountains my skull sullenly clot of anger skewered aloft strangled in the cang of the wind bites like a dog against its chastisement. I trundle along rapidly now on my ruined feet flush with the livid canal; at Parnell Bridge a dying barge carrying a cargo of nails and timber rocks itself softly in the foaming cloister of th lock; on the far bank a gang of down and outs would seem to be mending a beam. Then for miles only wind

and the weals creeping alongside on the water and the world opening up to the south across a travesty of champaign to the mountains and the stillborn evening turning a filthy green manuring the night fungus and the mind annulled wrecked in wind. I splashed past a little wearish old man, Democritus, scuttling along between a crutch and a stick, his stump caught up horrible, like a claw, under his breech, smoking. Then because a field on the left went up in a sudden blaze of shouting and urgent whisttling and scarlet and blue ganzies I stopped and climbed the bank to see the game. A child fidgeting at the gat called up: "Would we be let in Mister?" "Certainly" I said "you would." But, afraid, he set off down the road. "Well" I called after him "why wouldn't you go in?" "Oh" he said, knowingly, "I was in that field before and I got put out." So on, derelict, as from a bush of gorse on fire in the mountain after dark, or, in Sumatra, the jungle hymen, the still flagrant rafflesia. Next: a lamentable family of grey verminous hens, perishing out in the sunk field, trembling, half asleep, against the closed door of a shed, with no means of roosting. The great mushy toadstool, green-black, oozing up after me, soaking up the tatteres sky like an ink of pestilence, in my skull the wind going fetid, the water . . . Next: on the hill down from the Fox and Gesse into Chapelizod a small malevolent goat, exiled on the road, remotely pucking the gate of his field; the Isolde Stores a great perturbation of sweaty heroes, in their Sunday best, come hastening down for a pint of nepenthe or moly of half and half from watching the hurlers above in Kilmainham. Blotches of doomed yellow in the pit of the Liffey;

the fingers of the ladders hooked over the parapet, soliciting; a slush of vigilant gulls in the grey spew of the sewer. Ah the banner the banner of meat bleeding on the silk of the seas and the arctic flowers that do not exist.

Enueg II
world world world world and the face grave cloud against the evening de morituris nihil nisi and the face crumbling shyly too late to darken the sky blushing away into the evening shuddering away like a gaffe veronica mundi veronica munda give us a wipe for the love of Jesus sweating like Judas tired of dying tired of policemen feet in marmalade perspiring profusely heart in marmalade smoke more fruit the old heart the old heart breaking outside congress ? doch I assure thee lying on O'Connell Bridge goggling at the tulips of the evening the green tulips shining round the corner like an anthrax shining on Guinness's barges the overtone the face too late to righten the sky doch doch I assure thee

Alba
before morning you shall be here and Dante and the Logos and all strata and mysteries and the branded moon beyond the white plane of music that you shall establish here before morning grave suave singing silk stoop to the black firmament of areca rain on the bamboos flowers of smoke alley of willows who though you stoop with fingers of compassion to endorse the dust shall not add to your bounty whose beauty shall be a sheet before me a statement of itself drawn across the tempest of emblems so that there is no sun and no unveiling and no host only I and then the sheet and bulk dead

Dortmunder
Int the magic the Homer dusk past the red spire of sanctuary I null she royal hulk hasten to the violet lamp to the thin K'in music of the bawd. She stands before me in the bright stall sustaining the jade splinters the scarred signaculum of purity quiet the eyes the eyes black till the plagal east shall resolve the long night phrase. Then, as a scroll, folded, and the glory of her dissolution enlarged in me, Habbakuk, mard of all sinners. Schopenhauer is dead, the bawd puts her lute away.

Sanies I
all the livelong way this day of sweet showers from Portrane on the seashore Donabate sad swans of Turvey Swords pounding along in three ratios like a sonata like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step

Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway all heaven in the sphincter the sphincter mde now potwalloping now through the promenaders this trusty all-steel this super-real bound for home like a good boy where I was born with a pop with the green of the larches ah to be back in the caul now with no trusts no fingers no spoilt love belting along in the meantime clutching the bike the billows of the nubile the cere wrack pot-valient caulless waisted in rags hatless for mamma papa chicken and ham warm Grave too say the word happy days snap the stem shed a tear this day Spy Wednesday seven pentades past oh the larches the pain drawn like a cork the glans ho took the day off up hill and down dale with a ponderous fawn from the Liverpool London and Globe back the shadows lengthen the sycamores are sobbing to roly-poly oh to me a spanking boy buckets of fizz childbed is thirsty work for the midwife he is gory for the proud parent he washes down a gob of gladness for footsore Achates also he pants his pleasure sparkling beestings for me tired now hair ebbing gums ebbing ebbing home good as gold now in the prime after a brief prodigality yea and suave suave urbane beyond good and evil biding my time without rancour you may take your oath distraught half-crooked courting the sneers of these fauns these smart nymphs clipped like a pederast as to one trouder-end sucking in my bloated lantern behind a Wild Woodbine cinched to death in a filthy slicker flinging the proud Swift forward breasting the swell of Strmers I see main verb at last her whom alone in the accusitive I have dismounted to love gliding towards me dauntless nautch-girl on the face of the waters dauntless daughter of desires in the old black and flamingo get along with you now take the six the seven the eight or the little single-decker take a bus for all I care walk cadge a lift home to the cob of your web in Holles Street and let the tiger go on smiling in our hearts that funds ways home

Sanies II
there was a happy land the American Bar in Rue Mouffetard there were red eggs there I have a dirty I say honorrhoids coming from the bath the steam the delight the sherbet the chagrin of the old skinnymalinks slouching happy body loose in my stinking old suit sailing slouching up to Puvis the gauntlet of tulips lash lash me with yaller tulips I will let down my stinking old trousers my love she sewed up the pockets alive the live-oh she did she said that was better spotless then within the brown rags gliding frescoward free up the fjord of dyed eggs anf thongbells I disappear don't you know into the local the mackerel are at billiards there they are crying the scores the Barfrau makes a big impression with her mighty bottom Dante and blissful Beatrice are there prior to Vita Nuova the balls splash no luck comrade Gracieuse is there Belle-Belle down the drain booted Percinet with his cobalt jowl they are necking gobble-gobble suck is not suck that alters lo Alighieri has got off au revoir to all that I break down quite in a titter of despite hark upon the saloon a terrible hush a shiver convulses Madame de la Motte it courses it peals down her collops the great bottom foams into stillness quick quick the cavaletto supplejacks for mumbo-jumbo vivas puellas mortui incurrrrrsant boves oh subito subito ere she recover the cang bamboo for bastinado a bitter moon fessade la mode oh Becky spare me I have done thee no wrong spare me damn thee spare me good Becky call off thine adders Becky I will compensate thee in full Lord have mercy upon us Christ have mercy upon us Lord have mercy upon us

Serena I
without the grand old Britich Museum Thales and the Aretino on the Bosom of the Regents's Park the phlox crackles under the thunder scarlet beauty in our world dead fish adrift all things full of gods pressed down and bleeding a weaver-bird is tangerine the harpy is past caring the condor likewise in his mangy boa they stare across monkey-hill the elephants Ireland the light creeps down their old home canyon sucks me aloof to that old reliable the burning btm of George the drill ah across the way a adder broaches her rat white as snow in her dazzling oven strom of peristalsis limae labor ah father father that art in heaven I find me taking the Crystal Palace for the Blessed Isles from Primrose Hill alas I must be that kind of person hence in Ken Wood who shall find me my breath held in the midst of thickets none but the most quarris lovers I surprise me moved by the many a funnel hinged for the obeisance to Tower Bridge the viper's curtsy to and from the City till in the dusk a lighter blind with pride tosses aside the scarf of the bascules then in the grey hold of the ambulance throbbing on the brink ebb of sighs then I hug me below among the canaille until a guttersnipe blast his crned eyes demanding 'ave I done with the Mirror I stump off in a fearful rage under Married Men's Quarters Bloody Tower and afar off at all speed screw me up Wren's giant bully and curse the day caged panting on the platform under the flaring urn I was not born before Defoe but in Ken Wood who shall find me

my brother the fly the common housefly sidling out of darkness into light fastens on his place in the sun whets his siz legs revels in his planes his poisers it is the autumn of his life he could not serve typhoid and mammon

Serena II
this clonic earth see-saw she is blurred in sleep she is fat half dead the rest is free-wheelinf part the black shag the pelt is ashen woad snarl and howl in the wood wake all the birds hound the harlots out of the ferns this damfool twilight threshing in the brake bleating to be bloodied this crapulent hush tear its heart out in her dreams she trembles again way back in the dark old days panting in the claws of the Pins in the stress of her hour the bag writhes she thinks she is dying the light fails it is time to lie down Clew Bay vat of xanthic flowers Croagh Patrick waned Hindu to spite a pilgrim she is ready she has laid down above all the islands of glory straining now this Sabbath evening of garlands with a yo-heave-ho of able-bodied swans out from the doomed land their reefs of tresses in a hag she drops her young the wales in Blacksod Bay are dancing the asphodels come running the flags after she thinks she is dying she is ashamed she took me up on to a watershed whence like the rubrics of a childhood behold Meath shining through a chink in the hills posses of larches there is no going back on a rout of tracks and streams fleeing to the sea kindergartens of steeples and then the harbour like a woman making to cover her breasts and left me

with whatever trust of panic we went out with so much shall we return there shall be no loss of panic between a man and his dog bitch though he be sodden pair of Churchman muzzling the cairn it is worse than dream the light randy slut can't be easy this clonic earth all these phantoms shuddering out of focus it is useless to close the eyes all the chords of the earth bloken like a woman pianist's the toads abroad again on their rounds sidling up to their snares the fairy-tales of Meath ended so say your prayers now and go to bed your prayers before the lamps start to sing behind the larches here at these knees of stone then to bye-bye on the bones

Serena III
fix this pothook of beauty on this palette you never know it might be final or leave her she is paradise and then plush hymens on your eyeballs or on Butt Bridge blush for shame the mixed declension of those mammae cock up thy moon thine and thine only up up up to the scar of evening swoon upon the little purple house of prayer something heart of Mary the Bull and Pool Beg that will never meet not in this world whereas dart away through the cavoerting scapes bucket o'er Victoria Bridge that's the idea slow down slink down the Rindsend Road Irishtown Sandymount puzzle find the Hell Fire the Merrion Flats scored with a thrillion sigmas Jesus Christ Son of God Savior His Finger girls taken strippin that's the idea on the Bootersgrad breakwind and water

the tide making the dun gulls in a panic the sands quicken in your hot heart hide yourself not in the Rock keep on the move keep on the move

Malacoda
thrice he cam the undertaker's man impassable behind his scrutal bowler to measure is he not paid to measure this incorruptible in the vestibule this malebranca knee deep in the lilies Malacoda knee-deep in the lilies Malacoda for all the expert awe that felts his perineum mutes his signal sighing up through the heavy air must it be it must be it must be find the weeds engage them in the garden hear she may see she need not to coffin with assistant ungulata find the weeds engage their attention hear she must see she need not to cover to be sure cover cover all over your targe allow me hold your sulphur divine dogday glass set fair stay Scarmilion stay stay lay this Huysum on the box mind the imago it is he hear she must see she must all aboard all souls half-mast aye aye nay

Da Tagte Es
redeem the surrogate goodbyes the sheet astream in your hand

who have no more for the land and the glass unmisted above your eyes

Echo's Bones
Asylum under my tread all this day their muffled revels as the flesh falls breaking without fear or favor wind the gantelope of sense and nonsense run taken by the maggots for what they are